


Overture: The Long Way Around

by monstergabe (aproposity)



Series: The Long Way Around [1]
Category: Band of Brothers
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-24
Updated: 2015-04-24
Packaged: 2018-03-25 13:43:28
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,044
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3812662
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/aproposity/pseuds/monstergabe
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Writing Prompt: Before the Beginning</p><p>  <i>It’s not a dare but it could be, and it’s suddenly inexplicably important to Lewis that this quiet man reclining in his ODs, boots off and hair pristine like he’s waltzed straight out of a recruitment poster know that he is different from the rest of them.</i></p><p>Written as a precursor to my still-unfinished fic <i>The Long Way Around</i>. Before Nix was Nix and Dick was Dick.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Overture: The Long Way Around

It’s new for Lewis, the teasing.

Transferring from Camp Croft to Benning invited more growing pains than he’d anticipated. At Croft, he’d been the life and soul of the party, a guy everyone liked and clamoured to be around. Benning, on the other hand, is a different story. OCS is not for the unambitious, and the testosterone reeks as much as the gun oil. Lewis’ particular brand of humour had not been as well-received by his peers as it had been elsewhere, and that put him somewhere on the bottom rung of the social ladder – though he’s sure the good old Nixon name helped him redeem a few rungs in the process. But if Lewis knows anything it’s that a name can only take you so far, and the teasing is relentless. He isn’t an idiot; the vast majority of the men don’t like him, no matter what they say to his face.

There had been once, though. Lewis remembers standing in line on his first morning at OCS while the drill sergeant had expertly picked each man apart and dressed them down for the tiniest infraction. It wasn’t anything new, a routine show of cock-waving to put them all in their place before the real training started. Lewis had endured a full five minutes of errant saliva spray over a rusty cocking handle with aplomb, and had been well and truly bored out of his mind by the time the sergeant moved down the line to single out some stocky ginger kid for double-creasing his shirt.

From the angle he had been standing Lewis could see quite clearly that the shirt was immaculate, the second crease a trick of the light. The sergeant’s oversight had not been a surprise. He chewed the guy out just as thoroughly as the rest of them, snapped _‘get your shit together, Winters’_ as a parting flourish and Winters had responded with nothing more argumentative than a curt _‘sir’_. What _had_ been surprising was when the sergeant moved further along and Winters had, for some inexplicable reason, glanced to his right. He had caught Lewis’ eye by pure chance and thrown him the most melodramatic eye-roll Lewis had ever seen, and it quickly became a struggle to avoid being busted for laughing during drill.

Lewis had encountered Winters a few times after that, thrown together in group exercises. Winters exemplified himself as a capable leader but not a man here to make friends, and if Lewis hadn’t already got that impression he’d quickly noted Winters’ suspicious absence at anything not training-related. Still, it left an impression on him; the sense of boyish collaboration, the utter lack of hesitancy in making his feelings known, is sorely missed in a camp of would-be officers.

What the camp _does_ have in spades is gossip and rumours, flowing as thick and as fast as the beer. Lewis doesn’t know what people say about him, only that they _do_ , but he’s had people saying things about him since he was old enough to raise hell in New York City so it’s easy to forget. However, when some of the guys start to mutter amongst themselves about how Winters is a country bumpkin, a square raised on cow's milk and barley stew, it rankles Lewis far more than it should. Hell, it’s not even like what they’re saying about Winters is all that damning. In fact, it’s veering close to simple truth, as Lewis learns the evening he charges up the stairs of the barracks, dress uniform pressed and polished with every intention of at the very least _starting_ his weekly thirty-four hours of freedom in style.

He finds Winters stretched out on his rickety iron bed, socked feet up and a battered little book that, judging from the grease stains, could only have been swiped from the mess hall. He seems genuinely surprised to see him, probably surprised to see anybody in barracks on a Saturday evening, and when Lewis asks him if he’d like to get off base for a few hours and experience the southern night-life there is a moment where he’s sure Winters’ eyebrows are going to reach his hairline.

“That’s alright, Nixon. I’ll pass.”

“What?”

He stands there until Winters closes the book, his thumb trapped between the pages giving no illusions to the fact he’s not putting it down any time soon. He looks at Lewis apologetically, his smile polite but long-suffering. “I don’t drink.”

“What do you mean _you don’t drink?_ ”

The flicker of irritation in Winters’ face settles between his brows, deeper and more pronounced. He sits up a little, back straight as if bracing himself.

“I don’t drink,” he says again, and while his expression remains open there is a hardness there that wasn’t before. He’s probably heard it all at this point, three months in and sober as a judge amongst guys who previously hadn’t drunk more than quick, stolen nips from their father’s liquor cabinet, until becoming a soldier gave them license to pack away a still’s worth every weekend.

To Winters’ credit, probably every single comment he’s ever heard flashes through Lewis’ mind in the space of a minute, tired little phrases about religion and the regenerating properties of the liver. It’s that little trench smack-bang between Winters’ eyebrows that keeps his mouth shut. There’s an assumption implicit in this exchange and Lewis knows it: that to Winters he’s just like all the other guys in camp, loud and abrasive and tanked up to the gills, performing drill like trained pups winning their weekend pass.

“Alright,” Lewis says instead, as if that’s any better.

There is an awkward pause where they both stare at each other. Winters’ thumb is worrying the edge of the paper, as if impatient to get back to whatever the hell he’s reading – strategic notes, probably, as if that’s something to write home about – but his eyes never leave Lewis’. It’s not a dare but it _could_ be, and it’s suddenly inexplicably important to Lewis that this quiet man reclining in his ODs, boots off and hair pristine like he’s waltzed straight out of a recruitment poster _know_ that he is different from the rest of them. So, he runs a distracted hand through his hair and ploughs on regardless. “Well, come on out anyway.”

“I don’t think that would be much fun.”

Lewis rears back in mock-offence, a hand pressed to his chest. “You saying I don’t know how to show a guy a good time? Winters, you wound me.”

“I don’t think _I_ would be much fun,” Winters clarifies, matter-of-fact, and Lewis isn’t under any illusions about that. Still, when Lewis Nixon sets his mind to something it takes a lot more than an East Coast teetotaler to get him to back off, as his parents know well enough.

“Strictly speaking, I wasn’t after drinks and a show. You don’t drink? Seems to me there’s no one better qualified to successfully haul my drunk ass back to barracks before reveille.”

Winters shakes his head, bemused, but he’s not saying no and Lewis absently notes that he’s lost his page. Good, he thinks. The cover is dusty and faded and it doesn’t look very interesting, anyway.

 

* * *

 

 

By the time they reach Columbus’ designated haunt for officers-in-training most of the guys are already in there, shooting the shit and hogging the billiards table. Cigarette smoke hangs thick in the air alongside the stench of beer foam and bastardized war songs. Lewis gets a few nods, a few claps on the shoulder, but it’s the barman who stops halfway through pulling a pint to give Lewis a sloppy salute. Lewis can’t remember his name, positive he’s asked him for it at least twice before, but it’s not like the guy is the goddamn sphinx guarding the liquor stores of Columbus so it doesn’t bother him much.

He’s not oblivious to the double-takes being thrown in his general direction either, the overly inquisitive ones who’ve muttered ‘Quaker’ and ‘mama’s boy’ amongst themselves now stunned to see Winters at Lewis’ back. Lewis takes it in stride, refusing to acknowledge them as he finds a gap in the press of people surrounding the bar and planting his ass on a seat. Winters awkwardly half-clambers onto the stool next to him – the most inelegant Lewis has seen him yet – and there’s something oddly endearing about the fact this guy is more at home in the middle of a field exercise than in a bar. Lewis squints at him, really looking, Winters sitting there all dolled up in his perfectly pressed officer's uniform, not a crease out of place. He looks like he’s ready for parade, not a night on the town.

“Jesus Christ Winters, relax. No use waiting for the barman to tell you ‘at ease’.”

Winters throws a smile at him but his posture doesn’t give an inch. “A whiskey man,” he comments as the bartender – entirely unprompted and disregarding many of the other men clamouring at the bar – sets a brimming shot of Vat 69 in front of Lewis.

“You don’t miss a thing, do you?” And Winters can’t be _that_ much of a square because the teasing doesn’t make him clam up like a holier-than-thou stick-in-the-mud. On the contrary, it seems to be the only thing that gets him to relax, even here with the bustle of the bar and loud soldierly banter a world away from the peace and quiet of an empty barracks and a dry book.

Lewis knows what he means, though; long-used to new recruits with only a sprinkling of hair on their jaw, the bar is lined with tap after tap, a wall of brass bars separating patron and barman. The liquor on display seems scant in comparison, shelved and dusty. Lewis chugs the first shot of the night, grateful for the answering rush of heat that chases away the last of his reservations about dragging Winters along for the ride.

“Y’see, Winters, I have a little thing I like to call class,” he says, tapping the now-empty shot glass against the bar with a flourish.

“A little too much of it, from what I’ve heard.”

Now, _that_. That stings, even though Lewis knows deep down already that Winters is not a man prone to spitting venom, just as he knows The Andrews Sisters are gifted with the most well-constructed mezzosoprano harmonies in the northern hemisphere and olive drab looks surprisingly good on him. He should laugh it off, like Winters had laughed Lewis’ little jibe off, like Winters probably laughed off far meaner jibes every day in OCS. But there’s more than a grain of truth in it and Lewis can’t quite meet Winters’ eyes, decides he’s too sober for this and holds a hand up for the barman to bring him another.

“I’m sorry,” Winters tells him after a beat, but Christ but he actually sounds like he means it, contrite like a goddamn altar boy. It’s embarrassing enough that the next shot the barman sets in front of Lewis is gone as fast as it appears , because Winters is looking at him with creeping concern, like he actually wants Lewis to _forgive_ him of all things and wouldn’t that be a sorry sight this early in the evening.

Time for a subject change, Lewis decides, before the atmosphere gets any more stifling, and starts, "So, the drinking thing. Never?"

"Never."

"Not even when your dad's CFO makes some wise-ass remark about what you're gonna do when you grow up?" he jokes, already sipping at the next shot glass.

“Can't say I have,” Winters replies, thoroughly amused by the absurdity of the question, and tells Lewis in no uncertain terms that the cows his father tends to when he’s not got his nose to the grindstone at the electrical company have very little to say about Winters Jr.’s career choices.

The night continues in much the same manner, the two of them jabbing with words instead of elbows but never really hard enough to hurt. Winters is placid and polite where most people in the barracks would have told Lewis to go to hell by now, and suddenly Lewis wants to know this man. Not only that, he wants this man to _like_ him, and between that and the steady supply of whiskey his mouth starts flapping like a goddamn blanket on a washing line on a windy day. Lewis bitches to him about the food and the climate, about wise-ass officers and the woes of latrine duty, complaints echoed across camp like a tired old refrain.

What he _doesn’t_ anticipate is the way Winters masterfully steers him towards the things he _does_ like. Lewis tells him about his interest in the whole intelligence gig, about how he can read a map – read a battlefield – like nobody’s business, how he has a keen eye for strategy and a keener mouth when it comes to extracting information. Lewis is unafraid to rub shoulders with all kinds of people and that’s what makes him useful, makes him _feel_ useful and not just another body taking up space on a line somewhere. He’s more at home with the heavy weight of a compass around his neck than with a rifle in his hand, and when he tells Winters this the guy’s face lights up like a goddamn Christmas tree. Lewis becomes very aware he’s passed some sort of secret test, and his face burns with sudden embarrassment because while he’d been rigorously avoiding any awkward silences by babbling incessantly about every little thing that comes into his head, Winters has been _listening to him._ Avidly, apparently.

Tomorrow when Lewis is a little more sober he’s got to tell Winters to be careful with that. For now, he’s a little too self-conscious and rapidly running out of steam, so he clears his throat, picks up the next shot that’s conjured itself up by his elbow, and asks, “What about you, what gets you all fired up on a regular day at Chateau Benning?”

Winters has at some point during Lewis’ rambling signalled to the barman for a glass of water – either that, or he’s decided to break his fast with one mean shot of vodka, and the thought of Winters drunk is already so improbable and ridiculous it makes him smile. Winters takes a sip of it, his face pensive.

“I like the ice cream,” he confesses after a moment’s thought, so honest that it surprises a bark of laughter out of Lewis.

It takes a bit more prompting, but Lewis finally gets the guy to open up about himself. He’s slow and careful with his words, entirely unlike Lewis, but he proves just as good a talker as he is a listener. He tells Lewis about his home in Pennsylvania, about his childhood, which seems to Lewis to be pages ripped out of a religious youth group version of Huckleberry Finn. There’s one arresting story about a younger, more obstinate Winters spending an entire summer crouched next to a poor excuse for a creek with a length of cotton and a paperclip, hell-bent on catching a load, that has him howling with laughter, his grip on the bar the only thing keeping him falling off his chair.

Sure, Winters might be a square. But as far as Lewis is concerned there’s some definite rounding at the corners.

 

* * *

 

 

It’s around 2am when the same barman who’s been tending to Lewis so thoughtfully all evening decides to go and put a downer on things by calling last orders. The rest of the guys in the bar loudly complain, and on another evening maybe Lewis would join them but he can tell it’s way past Winters’ bedtime. To great amusement, Winters puts up one hell of a fight while Lewis is settling up his tab. Somewhere he got it into his head that Lewis is going to great pains to pay for the single orange juice he decided to indulge himself with, and convincing him otherwise proves impossible.

The bill settled, they stumble back ahead of the crowd and the streets of Columbus are disturbingly quiet to Lewis after a lifetime of the perpetual hustle and bustle of New Jersey. Everything is smaller here, more claustrophobic, but the walk back feels like less of a chore with his arm slung across Winters’ shoulders, Winters’ own around Lewis’ middle. It’s comfortable, like they’ve been friends for far longer than one night of friendly ribbing, and it loosens his tongue far more efficiently than the liquor ever will.

“Y’know, the first week into our training, we had one hell of a drill sergeant. Guy was an asshole.”

The left side of Winters' mouth turns upwards almost imperceptibly. “I remember.”

“Yeah,” Lewis says, momentarily losing his train of thought at the sight of that almost-smile. Having Winters here, slouched under Lewis' weight and simultaneously propping him up is odd to say the least, but that smile is more than just polite toleration. It’s secretive and nostalgic and Lewis is struck with the idea that Winters remembers that day on the field, getting chewed out and meeting another recruit’s eyes, throwing him that bitchy little colluding look when they’d never so much as spoken two words to each other. Maybe he can’t shake it out of his mind, just like Lewis can’t. Whatever makes him smile like that, Lewis counts it as a win.

They turn a corner and he thankfully has a brainwave. “Yeah. Anyway, this asshole, okay, he told me – he told me that I’d have an easy ride here. Wanna know why?”

Winters inclines his head ever so slightly, but his mouth has settled into a grim line and his shoulders are braced under Lewis’ arm. He already knows, and Lewis wonders for the first time how many times his little affliction of _too much class_ has come up in the barracks without his knowing.

“Because of my name,” he continues, “because I’m Lewis Nixon _the Third_ , not Lewis Nobody scraped off of New York City’s sidewalk.”

Winters’ smile is, if anything, becoming more pronounced with each passing second. “I never knew there were three of you.”

“He wanted money, Winters.”

His tone is sharper than it means to be and it suddenly occurs to Lewis that he’s made this too serious for it to be shrugged off like the usual drunken ramblings, not worth remembering by morning. It’s breaking a sacred Nixon rule, to never make things personal, so he decides to do the proper thing for once and keep his mouth shut.

At least he would, if Winters would let him. “So you’d rather be nobody?” he asks after a beat, and the question is so innocent yet fraught with implications that it sets Lewis off all over again.

“Yes. No! Aw hell, Winters, I’d rather be anything as long as it meant I could do one damn thing without my family pulling all the right strings to have the world fall into my lap. I’m in Assfuck, Nowhere right now and I’m still getting the same old backhanders: _‘I’ll give you this if your daddy can give me that’_. You know I didn’t even _want_ to go to Yale?”

“I didn’t know you went to Yale.”

“Yeah well, let me give you some advice, Winters. Don’t go to Yale. Nothing but a pit of old money chumps ready to tear your skin off if you so much as get your blazer tailored at the wrong place.”

“I’ll bear that in mind,” Winters says, and yeah Lewis can see the funny side, because when is this guy ever going to set foot in New Haven, but the acid is still bubbling away in his stomach.

He stares at the floor, and the truth is out before he can stop it, quiet and stroppy, like a child: “I wanted to do this myself.”

“Well,” Winters starts, shouldering open the door to the barracks, his voice dropped to a low murmur – a ridiculous consideration, since no one else is even back yet, “it seems to me that there are five states between here and New Jersey, and I haven’t bumped into another Nixon while I’ve been here. I don’t know your father,” Winters adds apologetically, “but from what I can tell he must have plenty of people to read his maps for him. I know who I’d rather have in the field with me.”

“Maybe I’ll really piss him off,” Lewis says, “join the paratroopers, throw myself out of a plane and break both my legs. That’ll show him.”

Winters goes quiet all of a sudden, and it strikes Lewis that this guy fits the paratrooper mould _exactly_ , one of those best-of-the-best types with the spit-polished boots and gleaming jump wings. Winters, from the immaculate sweep of his hair to his do-or-die attitude is a steel-blooded paratrooper and no mistake, even if no formal acceptance has been offered by any regiments to anyone just yet.

“Maybe I will,” Lewis repeats, serious now, knowing that if he was jumping out a plane with this guy next to him he wouldn’t worry about breaking his legs. He wouldn’t worry about anything at all.

The short trip up the barracks’ stairs is spent in relative yet companionable silence that Lewis no longer feels the need to smother with words. In fact, he’s feeling pretty damn good until they reach his dorm, and that’s precisely when the floor decides to tilt sideways. It pitches him right into Winters, who mercifully steadies him.

“You alright?” he asks, and he sounds so concerned that it makes Lewis laugh, like the guy has never handled a drunk before.

“Yeah. Yeah, just good old amber trying to make a dishonest woman of me.”

Winters chuckles and guides him to his bed, helping him sit rather than fall. He’s almost infuriatingly patient, grabbing hold of the heel of Lewis’ boot and undoing his laces for him, a task that Lewis would certainly have foregone and gotten well and truly busted for in the morning. Unfortunately, sitting proves very disagreeable to Lewis, and something lurches in his stomach so dangerously that he buries his head into his hands with a groan.

“Get some sleep, Nix,” Winters says, clapping him on the back, “You’ll feel better in the morning.”

Lewis is on the cusp of barking something about how it must really be true that Winters is dry as sticks, because _goddamnit_ the morning after is always the worst part hasn’t he ever heard of a hangover, when his brain finally catches up, rewinds and then threatens to stall completely.

_Nix?_

He jerks his head up ready to ask if he even heard correctly, but Winters has already left, his boots quiet but sure-footed on the stairs. It occurs to Lewis that until tonight Winters did not know his first name, was probably uncomfortable with using it like anyone would be, like Lewis remembers being uncomfortable the first time he called his father by his first name, the shape of it awkward and unfamiliar in his mouth. But then so is ‘Nix’, something Lewis has never been called in his life and certainly doesn’t know how to even begin to feel about it.

It then occurs to him that he never so much as thought to ask for Winters’ first name, either. He knows the guy likes ice cream, was born blonde, and pretended to herd twigs when he was a kid, but hell if he could pick his name out in a state census. He’s also very aware that he can’t think of a fitting nickname for Winters if he tried. Even his _surname_ doesn’t seem to fit him, not really.

Lewis collapses back onto the bed, rolls over and presses his forehead into his starched, over-washed pillow and decides he’s definitely overreacting. Nicknames are tossed around day in, day out, each more formidable than the last. This one barely even counts; there’s no _meaning_ behind it, not like _moneybags_ or _college boy_ or any of the other nicknames that have been thrown at him during his time at Benning. Nix. It’s the kind of overly fond nickname you’d give to a brother, or a dog. It’ll never stick.


End file.
